"Unseen" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this was Monkey Eggleston. He had received his orders from Ted, and was carrying them out with more or less delight. Paul calculated that he intended to drop down into the centre of the camp, unseen, his presence unsuspected by the sentries, who would be looking the other way ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... game or explore wildernesses was no remedy. That was just running away. Aristocrats do not run away. What of his debt to those men down there in the quarry? What of his debt to the unseen men in the mines away in the north? What of his debt to the stokers on the liners, and to the clerks in the city? He reiterated the cardinal article of his creed: The aristocrat is a privileged man in order that he may be a public ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... facing suddenly about. So suddenly, indeed, that she collided with an unseen somebody, slipped on the freshly washed boards, and fell at her victim's feet. A bugle shot out from under his arm and banged against the deck-rail; but before he recovered that Melvin had stooped, said ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... heart came Ramona's child; and on the child he could lavish the fondness he felt that he could never dare to show to the mother, Month by month it grew clearer to Felipe that the mainsprings of Ramona's life were no longer of this earth; that she walked as one in constant fellowship with one unseen. Her frequent and calm mention of Alessandro did not deceive him. It did not mean a lessening grief: it ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... that Dr. Duras—who was a venerable looking man of about sixty years of age—approached the bed, he darted, unseen by Francisco, a glance of earnest inquiry toward Nisida, who responded by one of profound meaning, shaking her head gently, but in a manner expressive of deep melancholy, at ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... slipping down the steps, and noiselessly into the water, all unnoticed by him. His eyes were glued to the ceiling, the smile played on his lips, his ears were filled with sweet echoes, and his thoughts were far away. Perhaps the dead lady came and passed unseen. That Charlie did not see her was ridiculously slight evidence whereon to damn so ancient and picturesque a legend. He thought the same himself, for that night at dinner—he came in late for dinner—he maintained the credit of the story with fierce conviction ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... benevolent Angel of Sleep laid himself again by the side of his grave brother. "When Aurora awakes," exclaimed he, with innocent joy, "men praise me as their friend and benefactor. Oh! what happiness, unseen and secretly to confer such benefits! How blessed are we to be the invisible messengers of the Good Spirit! How ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... girl, but a girl, notwithstanding her powers. What she suddenly saw was that, as if by one movement of some powerful unseen hand, Rosy, who had been the centre of all things, had been swept out of her thought. Her anger at the injustice done to Rosy had been as nothing before the fire which had flamed in her at the insult flung at the other. And all that was undue and unbalanced. One ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... out-and-out good fellow. I can tell you some anecdotes that are very much to his credit, only I know he would never forgive me. Unwin likes his kind actions to blush unseen. Shall you think me impertinent, Blake, if I ask what amount of salary ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... unseen by us the angel secretaries are taking a faithful record of our words and actions, and even of our thoughts. Do we realize this? and a more solemn question is, What is ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... Unseen hands investigated his pockets cunningly. As they finished, the man who answered to the name of Karl became articulate for the first time, following ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... and instinctively recognized the existence of an invisible Power and Presence pervading nature and controlling the destinies of man, and that religious worship—prayer, and praise, and sacrifice—offered to that unseen yet omnipresent Power is an universal fact of human nature. The recognition of an immediate and a necessary "connection" between the visible and the invisible, the objects of sense and the objects of faith, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... esplanade where the thistles have been suffered to grow around a disused stone well, placed at quaint remoteness from the house (if, indeed, it is not a relic of an earlier habitation), a picture of a wide green country rising beyond the unseen valley, and stretching away to a far horizon in deep blue lines of wood. Behind, through other windows, you look out on the gardens proper. There are places that take one's fancy by some accident of expression, by some mystery of accident. This ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... experiments Skirrl exhibited what seemed to be instinctive fear as a result of his unfortunate experience with nails in the floor of box 1. He seemingly referred his misadventure to some unseen enemy under the floor, and this in spite of the fact that he was given abundant opportunity to examine the floor of the box, but not until after the dangerous nails had been clinched. His long continued avoidance of the experiment boxes and his still more persistent hesitancy ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... other side of the ravine, and they naturally had a very demoralizing effect upon the party. Lone Wolf was not only brave, but sagacious and prudent. He was not the chief to allow his warriors to stand idly and permit themselves to be picked off one by one by an unseen enemy. But for the latter, he would have descended into the fissure, and, with several of his most reliable braves, captured and secured Mickey and his companion at all hazards. But what assurance could he have that after he and his men had entered the little ravine, a whole party ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... I can understand now that there was something peculiarly attractive to the diseased imagination of Deschamps in the prospect of inviting her victim to the snare, and working vengeance upon a rival unaided, unseen, solitary in that echoing and deserted mansion. I was horribly perplexed. It struck me that I ought to be gloomily sorrowful, but I was not. At the bottom of my soul I felt happy, for ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... upon the world, take with them an alert, a hopeful, an inquisitive, an ardent spirit, into whatever may be the next act of the drama; but my friend the antiquary, when he crosses the threshold of the unseen, when he is questioned as to what has been his relation to life, will have seen and perceived, and learnt nothing, except the date of the Dorchester earthworks, and similar monuments ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... huddled the white-faced regulars,—the pride of the army, the heroes of a score of battles!—crazed by fright, firing into the air or at each other, seeing every moment their comrades falling about them, killed by an unseen foe. I turned sick at heart as I looked at them. Hell ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... was seen coming back before the meal was over, across the little plain between camp and hills. A quarter of a mile behind him Jim Wilder rode, whether seen or unseen by the man in the lead ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... the realization of a new brotherhood among nations and among men. It came through the performance of a common duty. A brotherhood that existed unseen has been recognized at last by those called to the camp and trenches and those working for their victory at home. This spirit must not be misunderstood. It is not a gospel of ease but of work, not of dependence but of independence, not of an easy tolerance of wrong but a stern ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... virgins to succour the state in this hour of distress, they went on board with no less spirit and confidence than they had fought before. For it happens, from a common infirmity of human nature, that we are more flushed with confidence, or more vehemently alarmed at things unseen, concealed, and unknown, as was the case then. For the arrival of Lucius Nasidius had filled the state with the most sanguine hopes and wishes. Having got a fair wind, they sailed out of port and went to Nasidius ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... said that heaven is a place for those who failed on earth. The greatest hero is perhaps the man who does his very best, and signally fails, and still is not embittered by the failure. And looking at the fashion in which an unseen Power permits wealth and rank and influence to go sometimes in this world, we are possibly justified in concluding that in His judgment the prizes of this Vanity Fair are held as of no great account. A life here, in which you fail of every end you seek, yet which disciplines ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... has been variously called the a priori, or absolute, or spiritual, or Platonic, view of things. His criticism, his challenge for recognition in the concrete, visible, finite work of art, of the dim, unseen, comparatively infinite, soul or power of the artist, may well be [82] remembered as part of the long pleading of German culture for the things "behind the veil." To introduce that spiritual philosophy, as represented by the ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... domineer over one another, or the boys, joining together, tried to domineer over the girls, as I grieve to say boys not seldom do—they used to hear in the air, right over their heads, the crack of an unseen whip. It was none of theirs, for they had not got a whip; that was a felicity which their father had promised when they could all ride like a young gentleman and ladies; but there was no mistaking the sound—indeed, it always startled Jess so that she set off ...
— The Adventures of A Brownie - As Told to My Child by Miss Mulock • Miss Mulock
... Jesus called in the vision of the unseen world to redress the balance of the visible world, when He said that there was more joy in heaven over the penitent sinner than over ninety and nine just men who needed no repentance, so in His final addresses to ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson
... movement among the myrtle bushes about fifty yards from the road, and my mule confirmed his judgment by braying like Satan at a side-show. The noise was answered instantly by a chorus of neighs and brays from an unseen menagerie, whereat the owners of the animals disclosed themselves—six men, all smiling, and unarmed as far as we could tell—the very same six gipsies who had pitched their tent in the midst of ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... chamber, friendless and unseen, Toiled o'er his types one poor unlearned young man. The place was dark, unfurnitured and mean, Yet there the freedom of a ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... you not see how pleasant it was to me to find someone who would give me a peep into the unseen world, without requiring as an entrance-fee any religious emotions and experiences? Here I had been for years, shut out; told that I had no business with anything eternal, and pure, and noble, and good; that to all intents and purposes ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley
... decided to send a report to Captain Cortland. I believe it would be safer to send one or two soldiers, if they're the right kind of men, than to send a detachment. A detachment would be almost certain to be attacked on the way. Two or three bright men might slip away unseen, and get word to the captain and back to me. You know the men better than I do. ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... to many individuals, when we wish to bring each separately under consideration, the indefinite article is sometimes placed between the adjective many and a singular noun; as, "Where many a rosebud rears its blushing head;" "Full many a flower is born to blush unseen." ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... stairs, and looked in the room, unseen himself. There was the happy mother wrapped in a cashmere, and half-buried in an immense arm-chair, with a sweet motherly look upon her face, ...
— The Big Nightcap Letters - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... flood of melody floated down from some unseen place, in varying strains of divine music broken by many pauses, and running through every phase of jubilation, sorrow, and pain. It ended in a low wail of unutterable sadness, a pleading, yearning cry of anguish, which seemed to call on God Himself to hear. When it was over, and all was hushed ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... succeeding the drouth was an unusually mild one, frost and sleet being unseen at Las Palomas. After the holidays several warm rains fell, affording fine hunting and assuring enough moisture in the soil to insure an early spring. The preceding winter had been gloomy, but this proved to be the most social one since my advent, ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... about to interfere, for Roland's complexion rose, and it became somewhat questionable how long his love for Catherine would suppress the natural fire of his temper. But the interposition of another person, hitherto unseen, prevented Mary's interference, There was in the oratory a separate shrine, enclosed with a high screen of pierced oak, within which was placed an image of Saint Bennet, of peculiar sanctity. From this recess, in which she had been probably ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... tragic fate. She never knew how the time passed after leaving Mrs. Tremont, till Sanderson joined her at the next station. She felt as if her will power had deserted her, and she was dumbly obeying the behests of some unseen relentless force. She looked at the strange faces about her, hopelessly. Perhaps it was not too late—-perhaps some kind motherly woman would tell her if she were doing right. But they all looked so strange and forbidding, and while she turned the question ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... granted, you know how he died with his face towards the tomb of the beautiful Persian, "whose palankeen followed all his campaigns in the days when Empire was still a-winning, whose children called him father—Arjmand Banu, silent and unseen now for four-and-thirty years, the wife of ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... with the expiring breath, the former banquet upon the remains. The celebration of a victory is an exulting description of actual scenes of revelling, mead-drinking from mounted skulls, division of the spoils, and half-drunken brags[4] of future prowess. The sense of dependence upon an unseen Power is manifested only in superstitious vows for luck and congratulations that the Strong Ones have been upon the conquering side. There is no lifting up of the heart which checks for a time the joy of victory. They are ferociously ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... kitchen department is left, but no one enters it. Outside, the drum is heard, "No one will give more?" It has been bought as a whole, unseen—by ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... from their lofty perches than the outposts on the level ground. So too, when he dined or slept he had no fires burning in the camp at night, but only a beacon kindled in front of the encampment to prevent any unseen approach; and frequently in fine weather he put out to sea immediately after the evening meal, when, if the breeze favoured, they ran along and took their rest simultaneously, or if they depended on oars he gave his mariners ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... and some of our fellows as scouts, with orders to shoot him on the slightest sign of treachery, and he showed us where the Boers lay in the plain, and where we could take possession of a kopje on to which our men could march and act quite unseen, and where we could have defended ourselves against ten times our number, we ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... stood transfixed, beating time with his hand, his eyes beaming, his hips moving as he followed the spirit-stirring ballad; and then, as Douglas falls, and is laid beneath the bracken bush, unseen by his men, and Montgomery forces Hotspur to ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... about my garden and familiar precincts lurk the fears of life; all threaten me, some I may escape, of others I am the destined and devoted victim. Sooner or later—and yet in any case how soon!—I shall fall, as I have seen others fall, touched by an unseen hand. ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... details, but he was excited by the theory back of them; a world from which the unseen spirits of the dead will counsel and guide us in our daily affairs if we will listen. It was a new terror added to a world of terrors—they were all about you, striving with futile hands to touch you, whispering words of cheer or warning ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... cunning came to his aid, and he made a very artful speech, directed principally to his unseen hearer. ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... into bold relief, outlined, splashed, and stained with living scarlet. And this universal redness of carpet, curtains, furniture, and now of ceiling, even of white-draped bed, suggested to Katherine's distracted fancy another thing—unseen, yet known during her other hour ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... her hands, unseen by Mrs. Bowen, for Colville's instruction that all was going well. If it delights women to pet an undangerous friend of our sex, to use him like one of themselves, there are no words to paint the soft and flattered content with which ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... their predecessors made without hesitation, is intellectually and morally impossible, and yet they do not know what to put in its place. They are reluctant to give up the belief that in some way or other the death of Jesus on Calvary actually effected something in the unseen by making God propitious toward us and removing the barrier which prevented Him from freely forgiving human sin. Of course they add other and valuable elements in their discussion of the theme, but this is their central idea and they seldom get away from it. ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... now, and see to that poor woman at the post office." The minister took the good doctor's arm, and they went away dinnerless to attend to the wants of Matilda Nagle, suddenly smitten down with fever while on the way to obey the imperious infelt summons of the unseen Rawdon. Mr. Newberry was with her, having been driven over by that strange mixture of humanity, Yankee Pawkins, and Mrs. Tibbs was acting as the soul of kindness. The woman's case was a remarkable combination of natural and mesmeric ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... mysterious hands thrust into an Anarchists' meeting, at which he is elected to fill the vacancy caused by the death of last Thursday. A little earlier other mysterious hands had taken him into a dark room in Scotland Yard where the voice of an unseen man had told him that henceforth he was a member of the anti-anarchist corps, a new body which was to deal with the new anarchists—not the comparatively harmless people who threw bombs, but the intellectual anarchist. "We say that ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... did Mary, make Of trouble for his sake. God's Very Son of yore Within her breast she bore; And angels bright and fair, Unseen, her fellows were. ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... Psychology endorses the constant statements of all religions of the Spirit, that no one need hope to live a spiritual life who cannot find a little time each day for this retreat from the window, this quiet and loving waiting upon the unseen "with the forces of the soul," as Ruysbroeck puts it, "gathered into unity of the Spirit."[95] Under these conditions, and these only, the intuitive, creative, artistic powers are captured and dedicated to the ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... crowd of fair-haired heads, of fresh and smiling faces, noisily consulted as to which game should be chosen, a boy who had taken no part in the general gaiety, and who had been carried away by the rush without being able to escape sooner, glided slyly away among the trees, and, thinking himself unseen, was beating a hasty retreat, when one of his comrades ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... through with the passing and repassing of busy feet, so had the generations of field mice left behind them mute witnesses of patient, enormous labor. From the two cherry trees in the neighboring yard how many miles had these shy little people traveled, unseen of men, with one cherry at a time, to lay ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... I shan't die, however much I may suffer. But even when reading—I like best to read alone—I am never really at ease when at any moment a companion may suddenly break the silence and bring me back to reality by asking the unseen listening gods "if they've locked the cat out?" You condemn me? Well, perhaps I am wrong. And if you can find happiness perpetually surrounded by people, then I envy you. It is so much easier to go through life requiring nothing but ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... in close formation, their red coats blazing against the dark green of the forest, shifting figures were seen in the trees ahead, a French officer suddenly appeared cheering them on to the attack, and with shouts and yells an unseen enemy shot down the Britishers from the protection of fallen trees, from behind rocks and stumps, and from ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... Kangura boy performers afforded pastime by the quaint animal-like movements of the draped figure. He wears a huge grotesque scarlet mask on his head, and at times makes this monster appear to stretch out and draw in its neck by an unseen change in position of the mask from the head to the gradually extended and draped hand of the actor. The beat of a drum and the whistle of a bamboo flute formed the accompaniment to ...
— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton
... such I keep in prison, Keep them here at heart unseen, Till my muse again rehearses Long years hence, and in my verses You shall meet them rearisen ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... arms and wrists and burning eyes and whirling brain. There was no yielding to "beauty sleep" for poor Jenny. Dark circles often settled underneath the brave, steadfast eyes, and big, blinding tears sometimes welled up from unseen depths when no one was near to spy upon her woman's weakness, and the very people she slaved for were often querulous and complaining, and Mart's wife had about as much helpfulness as a consumptive ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... was no real body. I wonder the Gentleman did not carry his argument a little further, and prove, that Christ, before his death, had no real body; for we read, that when the multitude would have thrown him down a precipice, he went through the midst of them unseen. Now, nothing happened after his resurrection more unaccountable than this that happened before it; and if the argument be good at all, it will be good to prove, that there never was such a man as Jesus in the world. Perhaps the gentleman may think that this is a little too much to prove: ...
— The Trial of the Witnessses of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ • Thomas Sherlock
... ahead at the run now, but within a minute I plunged into some unseen hollow; my Mexican spurs tangled, and down I went heavily upon the ground. The shock was severe, and for an instant I lay there half-stunned. Baker was by my side in the twinkling of an eye full of anxiety and sympathy. I was not injured in the slightest, but ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... Death must chuckle in defiant glee when they send malaria and night into the palaces of the great through cracks and crevices! Philip's bloated, unkingly body became full of disease and pain; lingering unrest racked him; the unseen demons he could not exorcise, danced on his bed, wrenched his members and played mad havoc with each quivering nerve. And so he died. Then comes Philip the Fourth, immortal through his forty portraits painted by Velasquez. Philip was only fourteen ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... and as there are necessarily many there who suspect, if they do not know, my secret, my husband would be more likely to be surprised in a lonely house there, than he would be in the city, where he can always leave or enter our abode by the passage into a back street unseen ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... woman, whose head was well enveloped in the hood of her mantle, getting out of the Ferrara barge which had just arrived. Seeing her alone, and observing her uncertain walk, I felt myself drawn towards her as if an unseen hand ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... elevated trains of thought, and the profound and sublime aspirations which the external beauty of the world suggests, draw and rivet our mind and soul to its contemplation, and produce a sort of awful sense of companionship with the Unseen, which cannot, I think, be an experience of early youth. For then the volatile, vivid, and various spirit, with its sympathizing and communicative tendency, has a strong propensity to spend itself on that which can return its value ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... Mittie, believing herself unseen, had listened to the tale with an interest that chained her to the spot where she stood. She unconsciously identified herself with the cruel maiden, and in after years she remembered the long, sweeping locks of the knight, and ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... tired of observing him, and looked toward the sky again, behold the western ridge, which is far higher than the eastern hills, had caught upon its summits the first bright rays of the yet unseen day-god; while the rosy flush of the east had brightened into a blaze of living gold, exceeded only by the glorious hues with which a few bright specks of misty cloud glowed out against the azure firmament, like coals of actual fire. Again a louder ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... each man Swore to do his best, To damn and perjure all the rest! And bid the Devil take the hin'most, Which at this race is like to win most. 635 They'll say our bus'ness, to reform The Church and State, is but a worm; For to subscribe, unsight, unseen, To an unknown Church-discipline, What is it else, but before-hand 640 T'engage, and after understand? For when we swore to carry on The present Reformation, According to the purest mode Of Churches best reformed abroad, 645 What did we else, but make a vow To do we know not what, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... suspended by a thin chain, nine gold and silver axes, a lion's head in gold of most minute workmanship, a sceptre of black wood plated with gold, daggers to defend the deceased from the dangers of the unseen world, boomerangs of hard wood, and the battle-axe of Ahmosis. Besides these, there were two boats, one of gold and one of silver, originally intended for the Pharaoh Kamosu—models of the skiff in which his mummy crossed the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... no cross wind has once relaxed the root We set long since beneath the sundawn's rays, The root of trust whence towered the trusty tree, Friendship—this only and duly might impel My song to salutation of your own; More even than praise of one unseen of me And loved—the starry spirit of Dobell, To mine by light and music ...
— Sonnets, and Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... subject to horrors of the imagination, think what a monstrous fear that must be which seeks in darkness security from malevolent existences of the night. That is to spring to close quarters with an unseen enemy—the ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... visiteth the eyeless man, E'en so was heav'n a niggard unto these Of his fair light; for, through the orbs of all, A thread of wire, impiercing, knits them up, As for the taming of a haggard hawk. It were a wrong, methought, to pass and look On others, yet myself the while unseen. To my sage counsel therefore did I turn. He knew the meaning of the mute appeal, Nor waited for my questioning, but said: "Speak; and be brief, be subtle in thy words." On that part of the cornice, whence no rim ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... such squalid lives Dollars were of so much farther flight than now Early self-helpfulness of children is very remarkable Edmund Quincy Edward Everett Hale Either to deny the substance of things unseen, or to affirm it Emerson Encounter of old friends after the lapse of years Enjoying whatever was amusing in the disadvantage to himself Espoused the theory of Bacon's authorship of Shakespeare Ethical sense, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... so much that one young man, a new-comer, who, taking pattern by the others, had permitted himself to make sport of Akakiy, suddenly stopped short, as though all about him had undergone a transformation, and presented itself in a different aspect. Some unseen force repelled him from the comrades whose acquaintance he had made, on the supposition that they were well-bred and polite men. Long afterwards, in his gayest moments, there recurred to his mind the little official with the ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... from the right.) I loved her so! Ah, how this life of ours Resembles dreams illusory. Today I might have had her, here and always, I! Possession is the whole: slow-growing power That sifts down through the soul's unseen and hidden Interstices, feeds thus the wondrous lamp Within the spirit, and soon from such eyes There bursts a mightier, sweeter gleam than moonlight. Oh, I have loved her so! I fain would see her, See her once more. My eye ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... and his had become necessary to her. If they dreamed over a volcano, what of it? Most dreams for such lives as hers usually were in close proximity to sudden destruction. Waves from nowhere came up and overwhelmed them. Rocks from unseen heights fell on them and crushed them. If she was wise she would take what the present offered, ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... o'er the silent sea, an answer from unseen lips, Comes in through the great, gray fog, the word from the mist-bound ships,— A chorus of bell and horn, faint and afar and clear,— "Thanks, O Guard of the Deep! Watchers, ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... together in closely built city blocks, unsanitary conditions in one home endanger the health of the entire community. There is also danger from fire, and vice and crime may breed and spread quickly and unseen. The community is driven, therefore, in its own defense, to regulate the people's housing. In small communities, and especially in rural communities, where homes are more widely separated and in some cases ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... exercise of his art while in the full flower of his genius is a perplexing fact. No stranger story is recorded in the annals of art with respect to a genius who filled the world with his glory, and then chose to vanish, "not unseen." On finishing his crowning stroke of genius and skill in "William Tell," he might have said with ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... much good sense for that. Nothing brings them to place thorough confidence in Europeans but a long course of well-doing. They believe readily in the supernatural as effecting any new process or feat of skill, for it is part of their original faith to ascribe everything above human agency to unseen spirits. Goodness or unselfishness impresses their minds more than any kind of skill or power. They say, "You have different hearts from ours; all black men's hearts are bad, but yours are good." The prayer to Jesus for a new heart ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... beautifully cut hedges were white and sweet, and a caress of scent—the soul of the hawthorne flower enfolded them. Robins were singing on the topmost sprays, and the linnet's sweet babbling was heard from the happy nests in its secret places; while from some unseen steeple the joyful sound of chiming bells made music between heaven and earth fit for ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... for an instant in the midst of a wide fiat desert, the loneliest place on God's earth. For an instant in the stillness we heard the trot trot of a horse's hoofs. Then the unseen rider behind us halted, too, as though uncertain how to ride, ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... time on the heels of Captain Blunt—who lived by his sword. And in the dimness and solitude which kept no more trace of the three strangers than if they had been the merest ghosts I seemed to hear the ghostly murmur, "Americain, Catholique et gentilhomne. Amer. . . " Unseen by human eye I ran up the flight of steps swiftly and on the first floor stepped into my sitting-room of which the door was open . . . "et gentilhomme." I tugged at the bell pull and somewhere down below a bell rang as unexpected for Therese as ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... Edison, in which we can hear again the voices of the dead; the electric light which glows without air and underwater, electric heat without fire, electric power without fuel, and a great deal more beside. To these triumphs we must now add a means of photographing unseen objects, such as the bony skeletons in the living body, and ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... fear and policy have framed, nature disclaims: she knows but two; and those are force and cunning. The nobler law is force; but then there's danger in't; while cunning, like a skilful miner, works safely and unseen. ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore
... imperfection of Lanier pleases more than the perfection of Poe — even from the artistic standpoint. What he aspired to be enters into one's whole thought about his life and his art. The vista of his grave opens up into the unseen world. On earth the broken arcs; in the heaven ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... bordering the road on both sides. The major commanded a halt by merely halting, and, evidently himself a bit "skeered," rode on alone to reconnoiter. He was followed, however, by his adjutant and three troopers, who remained a little distance behind and, unseen by him, ...
— Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories • Ambrose Bierce
... and though she wrote through a mist that blurred the page, she soon grew conscious of a strange, shy sense of comfort, of a thrilling little spring of glad emotion, of tender, shrinking, sensitive delight, and by the time the hot summer was waning and August was at hand this unseen soldier, who had only shared her thoughts before, took complete and utter control. Why tell the old, old story in its every stage? It was with a new, wild fear at heart she heard of Stonewall Jackson's leap for the Rapidan, of the grapple at Cedar Mountain where the Massachusetts ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... case which has secure leather loops through which your belt can be slipped to carry camera and hold it steady, leaving the hands free and precluding danger of smashing the instrument should a misstep on mossy stone or a trip over unseen vine or root suddenly throw you down and send the camera sailing on a distance ahead. Such an accident befell a girl camper who was too sure that her precious camera would be safest if carried in her hand. Wear the camera ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... was dimly lighted, and the door of the Gallery was open. Harry stood in the shadow unseen, watching intently every movement of the girl's. She was looking at a case of miniatures and medals, memorials of beauties and of warriors. She turned from them to the picture of an Elizabethan countess, ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... changed from beech to pine and fir. It deepened and grew strange to her. She did not know it. And the light of the sky turned here from silver to gray, and she felt about her the stir of unseen things. But she looked neither to the right nor the left, but followed the snow-white hart that went before her. It brought her at last to its own drinking-place, and as soon as she saw it old rumors gathered themselves ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... thy lover given To one sweet vaporous wreath that lately graced Thy meditative lip, or how had striven To stay that form by unseen ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... of the door to the left, you pressed what looked like the head of a large nail, not its door only but the whole cupboard turned inward on unseen hinges, and revealed an ascending stair, which was the approach to my uncle's room. At the head of the stair you went through the wall of the house to the passage under the roof of the out-house, at the end of which a few more steps led up to the door of the study. By that door you entered ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... to spend with a friend from another world?" I calmly inquired as I was still unseen ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... lies in these mingled experiences; in the baffled efforts, the devotion that gives itself without return or response,—it lies in the doing and the giving, and not in the receiving. Nor does one fare onward uncompanioned by the friends and helpers unseen, as well as by those in this ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... and patriotic motives combined to add intensity of fixed and fiery purpose to the murderous impulse. Those then who, like the Medici, aspired to tyranny and sought to found a dynasty of princes, entered the arena against a host of unknown and unseen gladiators. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... to the propagation of the species. There is another kind of pleasure that arises neither from our receiving what the body requires, nor its being relieved when overcharged, and yet by a secret, unseen virtue affects the senses, raises the passions, and strikes the mind with generous impressions; this is the pleasure that arises from music. Another kind of bodily pleasure is that which results from an undisturbed and vigorous constitution of body, when life and active spirits seem to actuate ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... her. The sound of horse's hoofs, clattering up to the veranda, had caught her attention. But the hard, gray eyes had not yet recovered their normal frigidity of expression. There were still traces in them of the groping mind, searching on, amidst the chaos of a world unseen. Nor was Mercy Lascelles posing at the trade which yielded her something more than her daily bread. She had no reason for pose. She was an ardent and proficient student of that remote science which has for its field of research ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... the voyage he remained sad and impenetrable, until the English fleet was sighted near Corsica. Then only did he regain his wonted animation. Bonaparte told Admiral Gantheaume that he would fight to the death, and gave orders to sink the frigate sooner than haul down the flag. He passed, however, unseen through the British fleet, and disembarked at Frejus, October ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... what they mean is that, in the most fundamental of all social operations, the building up of the family, the issues involved in the nuptial contract, lie beyond the best exercise of human thought, and the unseen forces of providential government make good the defect in our imperfect capacity. Even so would it seem to have been in that curious marriage of competing influences and powers, which brings about the composite harmony of the British Constitution. ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... heads; the deep rocky channels through which the torrents had madly broken a way, tearing through every obstacle till they reached the Rhone, and marking their course with devastation; the scene of direful ruin at Martigny; the cataracts gushing, bounding from the living rock and plunging into some unseen abyss below; even the shrubs and the fruit trees which in the wider parts of the valley bordered the road side; the vines, the rich scarlet barberries, the apples and pears which we might have gathered by extending ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... in the rapidly growing daylight, discovered the character of the object that held her in its embrace. In fact, when half a dozen stout fellows had attempted to lift the whole thing out of the water the rags had dropped out unseen and were borne away by the current, leaving the light empty pannier and the body of the child in their hands. And the men marvelled at the ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... months past he had been subject to an unpleasant phenomenon that arises now and then out of the fumes of liquor. At the festive board, even as he raised the glass to his lips, the face of Crawley would often be seen to writhe with a sort of horror, and his eyes to become fixed on unseen objects, and perspiration to gather on his brow. Then such as were not in the secret would jump up and say, "What on earth is the matter?" and look fearfully round, expecting to see some horrid sight to justify that look of horror and anguish; but Crawley, his glassy eyes still fixed, ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... screeching.' Then Carlyle enjoined on his American friend for rule of life, 'Give no ear to any man's praise or censure; know that that is not it; on the one side is as Heaven, if you have strength to keep silent and climb unseen; yet on the other side, yawning always at one's right hand and one's left, is the frightfullest Abyss and Pandemonium' (Dec. 8, 1837). Emerson's temperament and his whole method made the warning needless, and, as before, while 'vociferous platitude was dinning ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... been wakened by the yammering of a tigress. His terror for a moment had been primal, literally a simian's helpless quaking. Earlier still, he had heard a hoot-owl, and encountered through it, his first realization of phantom horrors; he knew then there was an Unseen, and nether acoustics; here was a key to ghostly doors. A mourning-dove had brought back in a swift passage of consciousness the breast of some savage mother. Night-birds everywhere meant to him restless mystery.... Is sound a key to psychology? Is the ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... veil dropped again; but the Anne who walked up the dark lane was not quite the same Anne who had driven gaily down it the evening before. The page of girlhood had been turned, as by an unseen finger, and the page of womanhood was before her with all its charm and mystery, its ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... into the world has resting upon him an unseen hand reaching out from the past, pushing him out to meet his environment, and guiding him in the start upon his journey. This impelling and guiding power from the past we call instinct. In the words ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... Prince Joinville was despatched from Toulon in feverish haste with the frigate Bellespoule and the corvette Favorite. These vessels were piously fitted out to suit the august occasion. Whatever the motives or influences, seen or unseen, that prompted the two Governments to carry out this unquestionable act of justice to the nation, to Napoleon's family, his comrades in arms who were still living, yea, and to all the peoples of the earth who were possessed of humane instincts, yet it is pretty ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... drinking cup, out of which he, and all his family, and kindred, carouse with much, mirth and solemnity, in remembrance of his father. This nation has many other vile and abominable customs, which I refrain from describing, because no one would believe them unseen. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... doctrine and worship"—this, according to a committee of the deputies, was the true cause. "A spirit of division, persecuting and oppressing of God's ministers and precious saints," said Mr. Flint of Dorchester, "is the sin that is unseen." And not a few maintained that all their troubles were but well-merited punishments for having dealt ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... see both the road and his stick. Here and there in the black sky there were dark cloudy patches, and soon a star peeped out and timidly blinked its one eye. The deacon walked along the high rocky coast and did not see the sea; it was slumbering below, and its unseen waves broke languidly and heavily on the shore, as though sighing "Ouf!" and how slowly! One wave broke—the deacon had time to count eight steps; then another broke, and six steps; later a third. As before, nothing could be seen, and in the darkness one could hear the languid, drowsy drone ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the orchard, where they could keep an unseen watch on the garden and the bank of the creek. Judge Briscoe and Mr. Todd were ensconced under an apple-tree, the former still armed with his shot-gun. When the two young people got up from their bench, the two men rose hastily, and then sauntered slowly ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... saved for us by Mr. Shorter's research, for I believe his is the only record: "What sees keenly, speaks aptly, moves flexibly, it suits her to study; but what throbs fast and full, though hidden, what blood rushes through, what is the unseen seat of life and the sentient target ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell |
